Police Violence

In the past year, a lot of light has been directed at some particularly ugly incidents in which white police officers have killed unarmed African American citizens.  What is really disgusting about this is that in many of these cases - Ferguson, Missouri and Cleveland, Ohio  come to mind -  cops who behaved essentially like thugs in uniform have gotten way with murder.

An unarmed black man named Eric Garner was surrounded by NYPD cops in Staten Island. Suspected of selling cigarettes illegally, he was taken down with a choke hold - a method banned under NYPD rules - - and died as a result from asphyxiation. The corner labeled it murder. The district attorney cleared the officer who killed Eric Garner of wrongdoing. This kind of thing has been happening too often to unarmed black men. 

The vast majority of police officers are honorable people, who take their responsibility to the public very seriously. Most of them go through their entire careers without being part of an 'officer involved shooting'.

It's very clear that some police forces are much better at managing their lethal capability than others. In the case of local police forces as in Ferguson, Missouri, the problem starts with the police force not being representative of the community. The citizens of Ferguson are predominantly black, while the police force is almost entirely white.

Here are some ideas I've heard that make sense to me. First, police hiring practices need to be scrutinized closely to assure that the process excludes individuals with a history of racism or gender discrimination. Second, the training process must be revised to moderate the 'authoritarianism' that prevails in the policing process.  The us versus them (being the citizenry) mentality of some police officers must be rechanneled to favor restraint over escalation.

Another very big problem is the high level of tolerance in cases where there has been clear misconduct or excessive use of force in the policing process. Police unions seem to be willing to protect one of their own no matter the circumstance. Moreover, making district attorneys, who depend on the police for 'making' the cases they work on,  also responsible for prosecuting police misconduct, is clearly not working. 

In recent years, the police have been 'militarized' to a high degree, with assault weapons, body armor  and massive assault vehicles being gifted by the federal government to large and small police forces across the country.  Applying the 'SWAT Team' mentality to misdemeanor crimes needs to stop.

The police have a tough, high risk job. They are our first responders when violent citizens break the law. They need to be equipped and trained to professionally manage encounters with criminal behavior, to minimize the danger to the public and to themselves. That said, they also need to be accountable for their actions, and not be given a pass when their conduct is clearly out of line.     

Nature's Trust

Written by University of Oregon Law Professor, Mary Christina Wood, Nature's Trust provides a thoroughly researched review of the trust responsibility of government at all levels in America, to the people and to future generations.

Here is how Professor Wood puts that responsibility in the introduction of Nature's Trust.

The sovereign trust obligation offers a catalyzing principle to citizens worldwide in their common struggle to hold government's accountable for protecting life-systems. Nature's Trust and the primordial rights inculcating it create a populist manifesto that surfaces at epic times through the generations of humanity. These principles stand no less revolutionary for our time and our crises than the forcing of the Magna Carta on the English monarchy in 1215 or Mahatma Gandhi's great Salt March to the sea in 1930.  Resonating deeply and resolutely within the ancestral memory of humanity,  trust principles must now revive to stir a global assertion of citizenship in defense of humanity and all future generations.

Professor Mary Christina Wood has done an enormous service to society by reminding us how deeply entrenched the trust responsibility is in global governance.  We live in a time when the American political process has devolved in a circumstance of  'He who has the money makes the rules.'  Climate change, driven by the human addiction to dirty coal and oil, is a challenge that is not being addressed, primarily because of the failure of our elected representatives to recognize and live up to their trust responsibilities to the people and to future generations.

Trust law is no panacea. The best way to put government back on track would be a Constitutional Amendment that says, 'Corporations are not People' and 'Money is not Speech'.   That's a very tough nut to crack. For now, Mary Christina Wood's  illumination of  natural trust law has inspired a number of court challenges, demanding a proper government response to climate change.  Nature's Trust provides a solid foundation for legal remedy against our government's failure to meet it's obligation to protect nature and the commons for future generations.

This is a very important book. I give it my highest recommendation, with one caveat. The price tag - $40 for a paperback book - creates an unfortunate accessibility problem. I would love to have Nature's Trust for reference in my own library. Perhaps, at some point, they will come out with a different edition at a more reasonable cost.  For now, when I need to visit this book, I will go to the library.

Here is a link to author Mary Christina Wood, appearing on the Bill Moyers PBS Show, talking about Nature's Trust...  http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-climate-crusade/

Slut Shamers Need To Get A Life

Slut shaming is the principle way that modern society represses self-expression in girls and women.  If a female doesn't conform to a conservative line on behavior and appearance in public, she is labeled a slut, which translates to brazenly oversexed and immoral.   

First of all, who gets to decide what constitutes being oversexed and immoral?  Conformity is a cultural construct that has been used for centuries to repress women.  It began eleven thousand or so years ago, when humans traded the stone-age, hunter-gatherer nomadic way for living in permanent communities dependent on agriculture for survival.  The move to settlements also gave rapid rise to a male aggression/dominance paradigm that has shaped human societies ever since.  

Women have been subjugated and treated as little more than vessels for child bearing ever since.  Women who dared step out of the very dark shadow looming over them were given a scarlet label, or even worse, brutally made into fearsome example by being burned alive at the stake.

In modern, developed societies women have shaken off most of the limits that prevented them from achieving their full potential in earlier times.  These days, women's voices are loud and clear. They have demanded equal treatment and, for the most part, they are getting it. Some battles, like equal pay for equal work and reproductive choice, are still being waged, so the fight continues.

One area where younger people, and young females in particular, remain in conflict with older people is in how they express themselves by appearance and personal behavior. Female sexuality is a powerful force that has been almost entirely repressed since the invention of the wheel.  Not anymore. We live now in an era awash in sexual expression.  Forty percent of the traffic on the internet is sexual in nature, much of it extremely so.

Young girls born into the age of the internet and cellphones are now getting peer pressure to engage in 'sexting', where the private exchange of sexually provocative images is the norm. This is a broad form of sexual expression that is far beyond anything seen in previous eras. 

Religious conservatives and traditionalists are apoplectic about the rise of female power and sexual expression.  They lament the passing of the female modesty that was once the norm, and they are quick to apply the 'slut' label to any girl who choses to express herself overtly, by what she wears and how she behaves.

Here's a bit of information I'd like to share with anyone who dares condemn another person, because they function outside of a cultural straightjacket.  We humans are hardwired to be interested in sex. It is how we are made. The brain sends us strong bio-chemical signals in response to sexual stimuli. That's what nature intended. 

That's not to say that freedom includes license to behave any way one likes. Some judgment is required. But it's not young people who are open in their sexual expression that need to change so much as it is older people, who are quick to apply ugly labels.

Bottom line. Being sexual is normal for men and for women.  Every person, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, has a right to own their sexuality, and express it as they wish, without fear of attracting a 'scarlet' label.

There's been a lot of hoopla lately about the privately taken and shared nude photos of celebrities being stolen by internet hackers, who then put those images out on the net for public consumption.  Who deserves to be castigated? Should it be a celebrity, whose privacy has been violated, or the internet trolls who stole the images and 'exposed' them without permission?   The answer seems clear enough to me.

Through the ages,  sex workers have been the subject of ridicule and scorn.  Many of them choose to express themselves through that career choice.  Should they be condemned for doing so?  Or should they be accepted for who they are, within a framework of  public policy that regulates their work to protect them from exploitation and violence, with law enforcement focused on stopping the  exploitation of adults, and particularly children, who are forced into sexual servitude?  The answer to this also seems clear to me. Europe, to a large extent, is already taking this tolerant approach. 

I love women who are comfortable expressing their sexual power. As a man, I believe it's entirely normal to think that  way.  That doesn't mean that men should behave like alley cats when they see an attractive woman walking down the street.   It's okay to appreciate a woman, without ceding complete control to one's limbic brain.

I've wanted to express myself on this issue for some time.  Just today, I ran across a video produced by Hannah Whitton, a  young  girl from London in the U.K., who does a lovely job of putting slut shamers in their place.

Here is a link to Hannah Whitton's  wonderful video repudiating the social phenomenon known as slut shaming...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3bQLq9QGA4

Potty-Mouthed Princesses

This video is awesome. It's little girls dropping  F-bombs, talking about sexism, equality, respect, etc.  Cheeky and fun, and also right on with its message. 

We need a level playing field, where men and women are concerned. No gender discrimination. Equal access to education and opportunity. Equal pay for equal work. Equal rights in all ways.

Check this out. If you want the best for women, this will make your day...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqHYzYn3WZw

Antonio Banderas - A Man Who Cares About Women

 I just viewed a PSA done by the actor, Antonio Banderas for the United Nations 'Stop Violence Against Women Campaign'.  Well over half of the world's female population have been raped, beaten, murdered, or abused in some fashion. That is a shocking fact.   And, let's face it. The abusers are and always have been men.

Antonio Banderas

The paradigm of male dominance  entrenched itself about 10,000 years ago when humans began to live in permanent communities dependent on agriculture for survival.  The strongest males began to specialize as  warriors.  Culture evolved with women relegated to 'doormat' status. Religion reinforced the male dominant paradigm.  Christians, Muslims, Jews; whatever the brand, religion was shaped by men, for men.  Human history reflects endless conflict and bloodshed as one group of men worked for advantage over another. 

More recently, in western culture, women have made strides, but there is still a long way to go where equal opportunity and wage parity are concerned.  In the US, women still make about 20% less than men doing the same job, and there is still a problem with some men behaving abusively toward women.

In other cultures, it remains far worse. In too many places, women continue to be little more than the  property of men, abused, denied opportunity or access to education, oppressed in so many ways.  Cultural and religious dogma in Africa, the Middle East, and some parts of Asia and Latin America, work together to keep men dominant and women subservient. 

This must change. We must evolve our global human society to a place where women are equal to men in all ways.   Women are entitled to the same respect as men. They are entitled to live free of and without fear of violence. They are entitled to equal access to education and the same opportunity to achieve their full potential.  They are entitled to dream and experience joy, and to be all that they can be,

Every man should want such a world for women. They are our mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends.  I want that, and Antonio Banderas wants that.

I've been a fan of Antonio Banderas the actor ever since he became Zorro in the movies.   Now,   even more, I admire Antonio Banderas the man, and outspoken champion for women.

Here is Antonio Banderas speaking out for the world's women...ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3fyoHFuFgQ

FDR's Second Bill of Rights

Toward the end of World War Two, the American President,  Franklin Delano Roosevelt  (FDR) proposed what he called a 'Second Bill of Rights', designed to assure a decent post-war society in which no one was left out.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

 President Roosevelt called for the following 'Rights'  to be part of  his  Second Bill of Rights.  It was a very ambitious vision. Aspects of it are now part of life in America, but most remain elusive.

Here is a summary of FDR's 'Second Bill of Human Rights, which he called "a new basis of security and prosperity for all".'


The right to a job with a wage adequate to provide shelter, food, clothing, and recreation

The right of every farmer to a decent return for his product

The right of every family to a decent home.

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade freely at home and abroad

The right of every citizen to adequate medical care

The right to adequate protection from fear of old age, sickness, or unemployment

The right to a good education



A high percentage of the politicians in public life these days re little more than craven opportunists.  The only one I see on the current scene that reflects some of Roosevelt's bold vision, courage, and decency is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.  She would be my choice to succeed Barak Obama.  

Here is a link to an old film of FDR delivering a radio broadcast telling the American people about his  'Second Bill of Rights'  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EZ5bx9AyI4

Silhouette Man Speaks

Here is a very clever reflection of a big part of what ails us in America.  It comes down to a whole range of perversely distorted priorities, caused mostly by the sewer money funneled by corporations and the super rich to the seriously corrupted, elected politicians that are supposed to be serving the public interest.

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Study Says Successful People Tend to be Bad

Being selfish pays off. Many successful people have figured that out according to this research study. Well, duh. This is merely a confirmation of what seems patently obvious.  This psychology applies particularly to those in life whose success is defined by power and money. Being bad equates to stepping on other people to achieve rank and status.  Sadly, this kind of behavior does confer advantage.  Moreover, it is all too common .


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Studies Find That Successful People Tend To Be Bad

 By Eric Zuesse, Huffington Post   

On 29 July 2010, Britain's Economist headlined "Wealth, Poverty and Compassion: The Rich Are Different from You and Me; They Are More Selfish," and summarized a study, to be published in the November 2010 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, titled "Having Less, Giving More: The Influence of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior." The authors - Michael Kraus, Paul Piff, and three others - said in their "Abstract": "Across 4 studies, lower class individuals proved to be more generous ..., charitable ..., trusting ..., and helpful ..., compared with their upper class counterparts, ... because of a greater commitment to egalitarian values and feelings of compassion."

On 13 December 2010, Rich O'Hanlon of goodmenproject.com bannered "Study of the Day: Rich People Feel Less Empathy," and he reported that, "In mock job interviews, researchers ... asked more than 300 upper- and lower-class people to read the emotions of people in photos and of live strangers. Those [test-subjects] with a higher education-level, more money, and a self-defined social position, struggled to figure out whether or not someone was angry or happy." This study's main author, Michael Kraus, summarized: "We found that people from a lower-class background - in terms of occupation, status, education and income level - performed better in terms of emotional intelligence, the ability to read the emotions that others are feeling." The study's press release, issued by the journal Psychological Science, headlined "Upper-Class People Have Trouble Recognizing Others' Emotions." This study, published October 25th in Psychological Science, was titled "Social Class, Contextualism, and Empathic Accuracy."

Finally, a piece of scientific research had been done, and was reported here, which tapped into the strong tendency successful people have to be rotten to their core: to be so little concerned about the feelings of less-fortunate individuals, so that they're unable to speculate accurately about what those people's feelings are. Read their faces? What faces? Does Smithfield Corporation look at, or care to read, the faces of the billions of pigs it raises and slaughters? That's not their style. Finally, in this study, the reality was beginning to be examined and exposed, that the more successful a person is, the worse the given individual is likely to be. The implications of this study are ideologically explosive.
Then, on 20 December 2011, The Greater Good Blog, at berkeley.edu, bannered "Low-Income People Quicker to Show Compassion," and reported that, "Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that people in the lower socio-economic classes are more psychologically attuned to suffering, and quicker to express compassion than their more affluent counterparts. ... The results indicate that socio-economic status correlates with the level of empathy and compassion." The following day, the conservative online news-summary Drudge Report headlined "Study: Rich People Less Empathetic Than Poor," and summarized the findings. Reader comments following there were overwhelmingly hostile, such as the first one, which said, simply: "Boo-f**king-hoo." Readers at conservative news sites tend to hold compassionate people in contempt; compassion is despised by them as a weakness, even though George W. Bush and some other lying conservatives claim to espouse a "compassionate conservatism" (a contradiction in terms). The reality, to the contrary of that, was displayed there, at the Drudge Report. The study itself was issued online on 12 December 2011, and it was published in the journal Emotion. Its authors were Jennifer Stellar, Vida Manzo, Michael Kraus, and Dacher Keltner. Its title is "Class and Compassion: Socioeconomic Factors Predict Responses to Suffering."

A perfect case-example of this lack of empathy amongst the aristocracy was provided on 17 December 2010, when Lee Fang of thinkprogress.org headlined "'U.S.' Chamber of Commerce Lobbied To Help Kill Bill To Provide Health Care To 9/11 First Responders," and he provided the first investigative report on why Republicans had killed the bill to help 9/11 first-responders who were now dying from asbestosis (the World Trade Towers had been loaded with asbestos). He found that, "The 'U.S.' ... Chamber fought to help kill the 9/11 compensation bill because it was funded by ending a special tax loophole exploited by foreign corporations doing business in the United States. ... In September, the Chamber sent a letter officially opposing the 9/11 first responders bill ... [and] warned that ending the tax loophole would 'damage U.S. relationships with major trading partners.' ... In typical fashion, the Chamber has not revealed which of its foreign members had asked them to kill the 9/11 bill." Furthermore, "Yesterday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) sent out a statement that mirrored the Chamber's opposition to ending the foreign corporate tax loophole." However, Sen. Collins didn't actually cite the Chamber, nor its reason, nor even the tax loophole at all. Instead, she did the same thing that all Republicans in Congress were doing: she argued for the position the Chamber was lobbying for, but without even mentioning the Chamber, or using its argument. Instead, she said: "I support the 9/11 health bill on the merits" (as if that were ever a concern of Republican political figures) but that she was concerned "about the need for legitimate ways of offsetting the cost" (as if ending this tax-loophole weren't a 'legitimate' way). Then, she said, "If the Majority Leader were to bring the bill to the floor with appropriate offsets, I would support the legislation." (By 'appropriate offsets,' she referred to cutting programs for the poor and middle class, rather than cutting this foreign corporate tax-break.) Like with aid to the long-term unemployed, Republicans demanded that this measure be offset by budget-cuts elsewhere in the federal budget, without identifying where that elsewhere would be. (Republicans knew better than to be explicit about their serving only the top 1%.) She favored cutting estate taxes, and other tax-cutting for the super-rich, by adding those tax-expenditures onto the federal debt, but not adding to the federal debt programs for the needy or poor, not even this life-or-death program for 9/11 heroes who were dying from their asbestos-exposure. She demanded that tax-breaks for foreign companies must continue, though her public statements didn't mention that concern, which actually drove her opposition to the 9/11 healthcare bill. In other words: the Republican position on the 9/11 health bill was just another aristocratic con for the faithful.

On 26 January 2012, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PNAS, which is the world's most prestigious scientific journal, published "Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior," by Paul K. Piff, Dacher Keltner, and three others; and they reported that, "Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals." They found that, "Upper-class individuals' unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed." ABC News headlined "Are Rich People Unethical?" and interviewed Dr. Piff, who said, "What it comes down to, really, is that money creates more of a self-focus, which may account for larger feelings of entitlement." They feel they've got a right to loot. Paul Krugman's 26 September 2013 New York Times column was about "Plutocrats Feeling Persecuted," and discussed Robert Benmosche, the CEO of bailed-out AIG, "in an interview with The Wall Street Journal: He compared the uproar over bonuses to lynchings in the South"; and Krugman also discussed "a comparable outburst from Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman of the Blackstone Group, ... speaking about proposals to close the carried-interest loophole - ... 'It's a war; it's like when Hitler invaded Poland.'"
Then, most recently of all, there is this, so pithy and important that almost the entire Abstract will be quoted here: the study, "Social Class Rank, Essentialism, and Punitive Judgment," by Michael W. Kraus and Dacher Keltner, was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27 May 2013, with this in its Abstract:

"We tested the hypotheses that upper-class rank individuals would be more likely to endorse essentialist lay theories of social class categories (i.e., that social class is founded in genetically based, biological differences [like 'racism']) than would lower-class rank individuals, and that these beliefs would decrease support for restorative justice - which seeks to rehabilitate offenders, rather than [merely] punish. ... Across studies, higher social class rank was associated with increased essentialism of social class categories ... and decreased support for restorative justice. ... Moreover, ... essentialist beliefs decreased preferences for restorative justice, ... and the association between social class rank and class-based essentialist theories was explained by the tendency to endorse beliefs in a just world [Adam Smith's famous 'invisible hand' of God]. ... Implications for how class-based essentialist beliefs potentially constrain social opportunity and mobility are discussed."
This article itself noted: "These findings suggest that highly ranked members of society - such as individuals who perceive themselves as high in social class rank vis-a-vis others - may be inclined to endorse essentialist beliefs in part to justify or legitimize their elevated social position." Evidence was found that the most successful people ("highly ranked members of society") hold "essentialist belief" partly in order to explain to themselves their success as coming from their superiority, instead of from their ruthlessness or other bad traits that they embody.

To the extent that a person wants his child to succeed (in the ordinary sense of that term), to rise or stay at the top in social standing, the parent will teach his child not to care about the welfare of others but only of himself, and to do anything or crush anyone in order to win what he wants. The child will be taught that he is entitled to do this because of his inborn superiority, his lineage -- not because of anything he does or has done. On the other side, to the extent that a parent encourages a child to care about the welfare of others, or not feel entitled by birth, that parent will reduce the likelihood his child will attain or retain high social standing.

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The Central African Republic - Disaster Fatigue, Take Two

Here is a story that is getting no attention at all in the western news media.   The public is almost entirely unaware of the human tragedy in the Central African Republic.   The media fails to report it. It's out of sight, out of mind. Unspeakable cruelty and suffering swept under the rug; an inconvenient truth we prefer to ignore. Just another example of disaster fatigue.  

Truthfully, as painful as this kind of thing is to consider,  indifference is the easiest way to cope for those of us observing from a distance.  The plight of the Central African Republic is just one of a burgeoning number of places in the world that have been overwhelmed.  They are real time, contemporary examples of the many faces of disaster fatigue that beg for a global response that is comprehensive and life affirming rather than the limited response we offer, which is reactionary at best.

It is shameful that the world places no real value on these people that are suffering and dying, and the parts of the natural world that they occupy.  Quite simply, the scale of disaster these days, the number of people caught up in it, the cost of corrective action, is overwhelming.   It is overwhelming.

I like to think that, as humans, we can do better;  I think to think we can reshape our values and our world to treat every person, every creature, every stretch of our biosphere as though they have value. Humanity needs a reboot, before it's too late.


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Published on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 by Common Dreams

With Scant Media Attention, 'Human Catastrophe of Epic Proportions' Unfolding

UN, humanitarian groups warn of spiraling crisis in the Central African Republic

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

People fleeing conflict in the Central African Republic. (Photo: UNHCR/ B. Heger)A situation described as a "human catastrophe of epic proportions" is underway in the Central African Republic (CAR), yet has failed to garner widespread media attention.


On Monday, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson warned that the impoverished nation was "descending into complete chaos before our eyes.”

Describing the current turmoil in the country, the New York Times reports:

The situation has deteriorated dramatically since a coup in late March overthrew the president, François Bozizé, and installed a new president, Michel Djotodia, who was supported by an alliance of guerrilla fighters known as the Seleka, drawn from neighboring nations and the Central African Republic. Since then, the new government’s formal and informal forces have wreaked havoc or stood by while militia groups destroyed homes and carried out extrajudicial killings, torture and rape, according to human rights groups. [...]
Both the former government of Mr. Bozizé and the current one of Mr. Djotodia, which is backed by the Seleka, are accused of serious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and torture, according to a report released in September by Human Rights Watch.
However, since the beginning of 2013, many of the abuses of civilians have been carried out in Seleka-dominated territory, according to the report. Tensions are heightened by religious differences between members of the Seleka, who are Muslims, and the predominantly Christian populace, which is increasingly defended by armed Christian groups.

In response to the increasing violence, France’s Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian confirmed on Tuesday his country was preparing to send "about 1,000" troops to the former colony. Those troops are in addition to approximately 2,600 troops deployed by the African Union, ostensibly to protect civilains.

Doctors Without Borders/MSF has warned of "horrific violence" gripping the country plagued by a chronic humanitarian and health emergency.

“We are extremely concerned about the living conditions of the displaced, whether overcrowded in churches, mosques or schools or invisible, living in the bush with no access to healthcare, food or water and threatened by epidemics. Much more needs to be done and it needs to be done now," stated Sylvain Groulx, MSF Head of Mission in CAR.

Amnesty International sounded alarm as well, stating that a "human catastrophe of epic proportions" was underway in the central African country.

“The crisis is spinning out of control, despite the fact that it has been ignored by the international community for far too long,” said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
"There was a time when a humanitarian disaster on this scale would have had the world’s press swarming all over it, or at least received a due amount of attention," wrote Martin Bell in the UK's Independent.  "Sadly, not here and not now."

Meanwhile, on Monday, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a thousand women staged a protest in the CAR's capital city of Bangui. The women, whose mouths were taped over in protest of violence against women, held placards reading, “Stop violence against women. I am not an object,” and “No to murders, torture, rape.”



 

Everyone Gets Paid

This is a pretty radical idea,  but could it be where America is headed?  Economics, as currently practiced,  are only working for people who are shamelessly wealthy and maybe also for the sycophants who serve the wealthy.

Here are a couple of hard to refute facts...

• There is not enough work to keep everyone employed. Not even close.  Efficiency, automation, and cheap labor overseas are sucking the life out of the American workforce.
• An economy works best when its people have money to pay for goods and services. 
•  Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are nations where public policy is a close reflection of 'Everyone gets paid'.  Those three countries are also consistently revealed to have the highest quality of life found anywhere in the world. 

Right now, about 40% of all children attending public schools in the U.S. are living in poverty.  That is a shocking fact. Where is the mortality in an economic paradigm that allows that to happen?

What we currently have is a system in which a few people get obscenely wealthy while the masses starve. Giving everyone a monthly check might sound extreme, but it makes sense when compared to the way things work now.  Of course, if we did that, a couple of things would have to change.  We'd have to stop letting big corporations and the rich get away without paying taxes, and we'd have to substantially trim our nearly trillion dollar annual military budget. Right now, we spend more than all the rest of the world combined on our war fighting capability.  Where is the sense in that?

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November 12, 2013 - N.Y. Times

Switzerland’s Proposal to Pay People for Being Alive

By ANNIE LOWREY

 

This fall, a truck dumped eight million coins outside the Parliament building in Bern, one for every Swiss citizen. It was a publicity stunt for advocates of an audacious social policy that just might become reality in the tiny, rich country. Along with the coins, activists delivered 125,000 signatures — enough to trigger a Swiss public referendum, this time on providing a monthly income to every citizen, no strings attached. Every month, every Swiss person would receive a check from the government, no matter how rich or poor, how hardworking or lazy, how old or young. Poverty would disappear. Economists, needless to say, are sharply divided on what would reappear in its place — and whether such a basic-income scheme might have some appeal for other, less socialist countries too.

      

The proposal is, in part, the brainchild of a German-born artist named Enno Schmidt, a leader in the basic-income movement. He knows it sounds a bit crazy. He thought the same when someone first described the policy to him, too. “I tell people not to think about it for others, but think about it for themselves,” Schmidt told me. “What would you do if you had that income? What if you were taking care of a child or an elderly person?” Schmidt said that the basic income would provide some dignity and security to the poor, especially Europe’s underemployed and unemployed. It would also, he said, help unleash creativity and entrepreneurialism: Switzerland’s workers would feel empowered to work the way they wanted to, rather than the way they had to just to get by. He even went so far as to compare it to a civil rights movement, like women’s suffrage or ending slavery.

      

When we spoke, Schmidt repeatedly described the policy as “stimmig.” Like many German words, it has no English equivalent, but it means something like “coherent and harmonious,” with a dash of “beauty” thrown in. It is an idea whose time has come, he was saying. And basic-income schemes are having something of a moment, even if they are hardly new. (Thomas Paine was an advocate.) But their renewed popularity says something troubling about the state of rich-world economies.

      

Go to a cocktail party in Berlin, and there is always someone spouting off about the benefits of a basic income, just as you might hear someone talking up Robin Hood taxes in New York or single-payer health care in Washington. And it’s not only in vogue in wealthy Switzerland. Beleaguered and debt-wracked Cyprus is weighing the implementation of basic incomes, too. They even are whispered about in the United States, where certain wonks on the libertarian right and liberal left have come to a strange convergence around the idea — some prefer an unconditional “basic” income that would go out to everyone, no strings attached; others a means-tested “minimum” income to supplement the earnings of the poor up to a given level.

      

The case from the right is one of expediency and efficacy. Let’s say that Congress decided to provide a basic income through the tax code or by expanding the Social Security program. Such a system might work better and be fairer than the current patchwork of programs, including welfare, food stamps and housing vouchers. A single father with two jobs and two children would no longer have to worry about the hassle of visiting a bunch of offices to receive benefits. And giving him a single lump sum might help him use his federal dollars better. Housing vouchers have to be spent on housing, food stamps on food. Those dollars would be more valuable — both to the recipient and the economy at large — if they were fungible.

      

Even better, conservatives think, such a program could significantly reduce the size of our federal bureaucracy. It could take the place of welfare, food stamps, housing vouchers and hundreds of other programs, all at once: Hello, basic income; goodbye, H.U.D. Charles Murray of the conservative American Enterprise Institute has proposed a minimum income for just that reason — feed the poor, and starve the beast. “Give the money to the people,” Murray wrote in his book “In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State.” He suggested guaranteeing $10,000 a year to anyone meeting the following conditions: be American, be over 21, stay out of jail and — as he once quipped — “have a pulse.”

      

The left is more concerned with the power of a minimum or basic income as an anti-poverty and pro-mobility tool. There happens to be some hard evidence to bolster the policy’s case. In the mid-1970s, the tiny Canadian town of Dauphin ( the “garden capital of Manitoba” ) acted as guinea pig for a grand experiment in social policy called “Mincome.” For a short period of time, all the residents of the town received a guaranteed minimum income. About 1,000 poor families got monthly checks to supplement their earnings.

      

Evelyn Forget, a health economist at the University of Manitoba, has done some of the best research on the results. Some of her findings were obvious: Poverty disappeared. But others were more surprising: High-school completion rates went up; hospitalization rates went down. “If you have a social program like this, community values themselves start to change,” Forget said.

      

There are strong arguments against minimum or basic incomes, too. Cost is one. Creating a massive disincentive to work is another. But some experts said the effect might be smaller than you would think. A basic income might be enough to live on, but not enough to live very well on. Such a program would be designed to end poverty without creating a nation of layabouts. The Mincome experiment offers some backup for that argument, too.“For a lot of economists, the issue was that you would disincentivize work,” said Wayne Simpson, a Canadian economist who has studied Mincome. “The evidence showed that it was not nearly as bad as some of the literature had suggested.”

There’s a deeper, scarier reason that arguments for guaranteed incomes have resurfaced of late. Wages are stagnant, unemployment is high and tens of millions of families are struggling in Europe and here at home. Despite record corporate earnings and skyrocketing fortunes for the college-educated and already well-off, the job market is simply not rewarding many fully employed workers with a decent way of life. Millions of households have had no real increase in earnings since the late 1980s. Consider the current debate over fast-food workers’ wages.

      

The advocacy group Low Pay Is Not OK posted a phone call, recorded by a 10-year McDonald’s veteran, Nancy Salgado, when she contacted the company’s “McResource” help line. The operator told Salgado that she could qualify for food stamps and home heating assistance, while also suggesting some area food banks — impressively, she knew to recommend these services without even asking about Salgado’s wage ($8.25 an hour), though she was aware Salgado worked full time. The company earned $5.5 billion in net profits last year, and appears to take for granted that many of its employees will be on the dole.

      

Absurd as a minimum income might seem to bootstrapping Americans, one already exists in a way — McDonald’s knows it. If our economy is no longer able to improve the lives of the working poor and low-income families, why not tweak our policies to do what we’re already doing, but better — more harmoniously? It’s hardly uplifting news, but minimum incomes just might be stimmig for the United States too.

 

___________

      

Annie Lowrey is an economics reporter for The Times. 

 

 

 

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Jackson Katz on Gender Bias and Violence

I never heard of this guy, but I like what he says.  I found a link to his TED talk on Facebook.  Turns out his work is focused on training men in the military, on sports teams, in business, and in other venues to become leaders in standing up to gender bias and violence. His paradigm is simple, but also formidable.  He wants men in positions of power and influence to take the lead in calling out instances where women, or any other ethnic or gender category persons, are subjected to verbal abuse or violent behavior. 

Acting like a clueless prick doesn't take balls. The courage lies with those who stand up to that brand of mindless misanthropy. Let's face it, some women are jerks, but most jerks are male, and those jerks need to be called out when the step over the line. That's how the line gets redrawn.

Jackson Katz

Here is Jackson Katz's TED talk on gender bias and violence... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvSfeCRxe8

Inequality For All

Robert Reich is an economist. He was Secretary of Labor under the Clinton Administration. He is now a Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.

Robert Reich isn't the tallest of men, but he towers as a warrior for the fallen middle class in America. His view of what's wrong with America and what is required to make things right fits very much with my own view of things.

Robert Reich is now at the center of a new, feature length theatrical advocacy film titled,  Inequality for all. 

Here is a link to the movie trailer  for Inequality for all...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9REdcxfie3M&feature=player_embedded

Here is a link to the movie webpage...    http://inequalityforall.com/

WTF Americans

Telling it like it is....

 

 

 

 

 

I Am a Feminist

I am also a mature, white heterosexual male.   So why am I making this declaration?  Because women are equal partners with men and should be treated as such.  There is no male person alive that didn't start life in his mother's womb.  For me, it feels good and right to be a  feminist.  Being a male feminist means that you embrace the best for women as being normal and basic as well as right. You want women to be treated equally with men.  You support equal pay for equal work. You support equal access to opportunity. You believe that  healthcare and reproductive choice are rights that all women (and men) should have. You believe girls have a right to an education just as boys do. You believe violence, intimidation, indeed any kind of gender based bias, has no place in human society. Shouldn't everybody be for those things?

I'm not suggesting there are no differences between men and women.  The socio-biological research conducted by E.O. Wilson and others suggests that the gender based behavioral patterns seen in other mammal species apply to humans as well. Human males can be territorial, and aggressive. Females are more often nurturing.  Broad generalizations for sure, but when we look at the historical record, isn't that pretty much what we see?

Author Riane Eisler, in her books, The Chalice and the Blade being one example, reveals clear gender patterns in the evolution of the human species. Long ago, when humans were nomadic, hunter-gathers, the anthropological record indicates that men and women lived more or less as equals in small clans. Their lifestyles revolved around the seasons and rhythms of nature. Women's fertility was celebrated as a part of the sacred mystery of life.

Things changed when the age of agriculture arrived 10,000-12,000 years ago.  Humans domesticated plants and animals, and began to grow their food and live in permanent settlements.  This was the beginning of societies ruled by dominant males.  Women were subjugated, with their roles narrowly defined around the act of child-bearing and nurturing. 

Male dominance brought us the hierarchical church. It brought us tyrant emperors, kings and warrior elites bent on bloody conquest, and an industrial age defined by a rapacious, male dominant economic system in which the few were hugely rewarded at the expense of the masses. To a large degree, it's still that way.

To be sure, early in the 21st century, in the developed nations at least, women have overcome many obstacles on the road to equality. In the United States, many women now hold political office. More and more job descriptions are free of gender bias.  Still, the issue of equal pay for equal work remains unresolved, and reproductive rights are under heavy assault from conservatives. In many developing nations, the situation remains far worse. In too many places, women are still treated as chattel, subject to violence, denied access to education, denied reproductive choice. 

Despite the often destructive nature of the male dominant paradigm, humanity has made progress since the age of cave-dwellers. But there are now seven billion plus humans on planet Earth. We are pushing the planet's resources to the brink. We are relentlessly exploiting our water, forests, soils, and other critical resources. We have polluted our oceans. Our dependence on fossil fuels like coal and oil have caused unprecedented climate change. We are approaching a point of no-return with the damage we have done to the biosphere each of us depends on. The way we live must change. That's true in the U.S., in  the developed nations, and in all of those places yet to achieve the dignity to which every human being has a right.

As a male of the species, it troubles me that I have to admit that it has been my own gender that has  gotten us into this mess.  I'm not saying every male is a rapacious sociopath, but that is an apt description for too many of those who  end up with power and influence. Bottom line: Men alone are not going to get us out of the trouble we're in.

I am a feminist because championing equal rights and treatment for women is absolutely the right thing to do.  The full participation of women is absolutely indispensable to any kind of sustainable future.

We must have a political system that is open and accountable to all citizens, not just the privileged one percent. Corporations must be reigned in and made subject to appropriate controls. Banks must be tightly regulated, putting the public interest first.   I see no possibility of this kind of human evolution until women are included at the table as equal partners to men. 

I'm with you, ladies. I am a feminist. 

I am making this declaration, with one caveat. I am a heterosexual male. As such. I have the same sexual cravings as other hetero males. I have no shame about that.  I mention this because there is one brand of  feminism that is quick to label expressions of male sexuality as objectifying and offensive to women.  I'm sorry. Heterosexual males are hardwired to have a sexual interest in women.  I'm not saying women don't get objectified. It happens all the time. It's men being men. The problem lies with men who are only able to see women as sexual objects. A lot of men are like that. Probably 30% are like that. These same guys are also, very often, stridently opposed to all forms of sexual expression and reproductive freedom. The way forward is to leave them behind.  Marginalize them. Ignore them. Vote them out of power.  In the U.S. at least, these Neanderthals are mostly older white males. They are already on their way out.

My guess is that 40% of American adult males are already sensitized. They may not describe themselves as feminists but they support reproductive freedom, equality in the workplace, etc.  If 40% of males are already with you, and another 30% will never be with you, that leaves 30% that are open to persuasion.

My point is this; let's not stigmatize all men because 30% of the male population are incorrigible  misogynists. The way forward is to nurture the 70% of adult males who are already feminists or who can become that way with some thoughtful encouragement.

Where sexual expression is concerned, the brand of feminism I subscribe to is reflected in the approach taken by a group called, Feminists for Free Expression (FFE). Co-founded by Nadine Strossen, who for 17 years was President of the American Civil Liberties Union,  FFE takes well reasoned positions on reproductive freedom, censorship, pornography, prostitution, and sexual expression in general.  Most of Europe is already where FFE believes America should be; sex work is legal and regulated,  most forms of consensual, adult sexual expression are tolerated. 
 
The world is not going to fully embrace a sustainable pathway until women have an equal voice with men.  There are many civilization scale challenges that demand our attention. All of them can be more effectively addressed with women fully empowered as participants in shaping the future.

I am a feminist...

Boycotting Florida

This past weekend,  a fool named George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering a 17 year old black boy named Trayvon Martin. Most people know the story. This guy Zimmerman, a cop-wanna-be, is out guarding his neighborhood. He's got a handgun concealed on his hip.  He decides this kid Trayvon Martin is a 'suspect'. He harasses the kid, gets into an altercation with him and shoots him dead.

Zimmerman was out looking for trouble. He pursued the kid when the police told him not to. He killed the kid. How is that not at least manslaughter?  

The state of Florida has something called the 'Stand your ground' law. It was created by the Republican conservative controlled Florida legislature at the behest of  gun advocacy groups like the National Rifle Association.

The jury in Zimmerman's trial acquitted him, saying he was defending himself, even though he started the confrontation.  Self-defense has always been part of the law for people who feel threatened with no reasonable means of retreat from the threat. 

 Florida is one of a handful of states that have 'Stand your ground' laws. That in effect allows one person to kill another person if he or she feels threatened by that other person, even if the shooter does have a reasonable means of escaping the confrontation.

Anyway, the legal system in Florida has allowed George Zimmerman to get away with murder.  Here's my response.  I will not set foot in or spend one dollar in the state of Florida until the 'Stand Your Ground' law is repealed.  If enough people took that kind of personal action, the people of Florida would get the message and vote out the conservative politicians who are responsible for making Florida such a dangerous place, particularly for young black men.

Twilight of the Elites

Just finished reading Chris Hayes'  book, Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy.   The idea behind the book is rooted in human nature and is pretty self-evident. It is this: People like to get ahead, and when they do, they like to stay ahead.  In America we have evolved a meritocracy to provide opportunity for the best and brightest to achieve the American dream. At least, that's the way it's supposed to work.

Chris Hayes is a very skilled wordsmith. Combine that with a very compelling and well researched argument,  you get a terrific book.   Twilight of the Elites is a terrific book.

At this point, I'm going to defer to some quotes pulled right from the book, interspersed  with some thoughts of my own.

'...the iron law of meritocracy (predicts) that societies ordered around the meritocratic will produce inequality without the attendant mobility ideal... over time, a society will grow both more unequal and less mobile as those who ascend its heights create means of  preserving and defending their privilege and find ways to pass it on across generations.'

This is not rocket science. Kings, Emperors, and war lords have been operating this way since the beginnings of agriculture, 10,000 years ago.  Elites entrench themselves in positions of power and privilege and  they stay there by any means necessary. In the world we live in, it's people like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson, who wield their power and influence to maintain the status quo that favors them while diminishing the masses.

'...one of the lessons of the (past decades) is that intensively competitive, high reward meritocratic environments are prone to produce all kinds of fraud, deception, conniving, and game rigging.'

'...we cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless and the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. This is the America in which we currently reside.'

'While the basic logic of democracy is one person one vote, our entire system of representation  heavily weights the preferences and interests of those with the most money.'

'...in the three decades after 1979, the top 10 percent captured all of the income gains, while incomes for the bottom 90% declined.

'The challenge, and it is not a small one, is directing the frustration, anger, and alienation we all feel into building a trans-ideological coalition that can actually dislodge the power of the post-meritocratic elite.'

So, corrective action is required; disruptive corrective action.  Where to focus the attention of the disaffected to deliver meaningful change?  In Twilight of the Elites, Chris Hayes talks about building coalitions across ideologies; bringing the disaffected tea party types together with  progressive change agents  like the 'Occupy Wall Streeters' to disrupt the gravy train the elite have created for themselves. That's a tall order to be sure.  This is where Hayes' book falls a bit short.  He talks about altering the code for income taxes and about restoring the estate tax  to reduce the extreme advantage people like Paris Hilton gain through massive inherited wealth. Problem is the already wealthy are experts at using their money and influence to thwart any efforts to undermine their dominant position.

How to get around this problem?  The answer to me is not complicated.  You have to disrupt the ability of the elites to use their wealth to get what they want. The way to do that is to get the underwhelming masses of people affected to focus on one straightforward action that would induce the change that is so badly needed. I'm talking about a constitutional amendment that eliminates 'corporate personhood and the idea that 'money equals free speech'.  These two corrupt legal constructs  are the foundation on which rests the perverse reality that  'he who has the money makes the rules.'

A group called 'Move to Amend' is pressing for just such an amendment. It's language is brief and unambiguous...

House Joint Resolution 29 introduced February 14, 2013

Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]

Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.

Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

  _____________________________

Here is a link to Move to Amend's webpage...   https://movetoamend.org/

Senate Sells Out to the NRA

Today, the United States Senate, or I should say the conservatives in the Senate toed the line for the  National Rifle Association [NRA] and voted down legislation that would be instituted universal background checks for people wanting to purchase guns in America.  The Republican party deserves the blame for this because there were enough votes to pass this bill, were it not for yet another GOP filibuster. The vote was 54-46; not enough to beat the much-abused filibuster rules in the Senate.

This effort to establish a universal background check system for gun purchases was favored by 90% of the voting public. Republican voters supported it. Even NRA members overwhelmingly supported it.

Sad to say, the background check legislation was supposedly the easiest of the mix of actions needed to quell gun violence in America.  The separate Senate efforts to limit gun cartridge magazine size, to restrict assault weapons, and to criminalize 'strawman' purchases of guns all were doomed right along with the background checks.

In the wake of the mass murder of children in Newton, Connecticut, how could the senate naysayers respond so despicably?  Very simply, it comes down to politics.  The conservatives who refused to support Senate action on gun safety are beholden to the NRA, which  ignored it's own membership and stood vehemently against any kind of restriction on guns  Let's call a spade a spade. The NRA is a lobbying organization.   It's gun owner members are being used to shield the NRA's real mission, which is to vigorously shill for gun and ammunition manufacturers.

The whole gun debate is a microcosm for the root cause of the sweeping dysfunction in our system of governance.  American is no longer a democracy. It is a plutocracy; it represents the rich and big corporations, not it's citizens.  Quite simply, he who has the money makes the rules in America.  This circumstance applies across the board. No matter the issue, corporations and wealthy individuals are are able to use their money and influence to manipulate public policy to get the result they want, no matter the public interest.

The conservative leaning U.S. Supreme Court has said that money is a form of free speech.  They also consider corporations as persons under the law. As long as these two morally bankrupt legal constructs stand,  democracy in America is a sham. 

The path to much needed gun safety legislation requires a congress that respects the will of  the people.  The same is true for climate change. Whatever the issue, the first step to meaningful action is to push back against the money and influence of the rich and powerful. Best way to do that is to enact a Constitutional amendment that says money is not speech and corporations are not people. Until we do that, nothing much good is going to get done by the people we elect to represent the public interest.

Anyone who wants to be a part of the solution on gun safety should take the time to visit the website for Move to Amend. Become part of the citizen action to take back our government by passing a Constitutional Amendment to end 'money as speech' and corporate personhood.

Here is a link to the Move to Amend website... https://movetoamend.org/



.

Bill Gates - Reinventing the Rubber

Bill Gates is acting on an inspiration.  He's offered a prize of $100,000 to anyone who can reinvent the condom.  The twist; he wants a condom that actually improves the sexual experience.

Condoms are a very cheap and effective way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and to protect against STDs, including HIV. 

What Bill Gates wants is a condom that enhances the pleasure of sexual intimacy.  A condom that feels so good, people prefer sex with it to sex without it.

We live in a world where sex without protection results in many pregnancies that are unwanted. Worldwide, estimates are that 40% of all pregnancies are unwanted.  If one believes as I do that every child should be a wanted child,  the fact that four in ten pregnancies are not wanted has to be troubling.   How do we change that?  First by making condoms widely available at little or no cost. Second, by taking steps to encourage their use.  

The African continent is the epicenter for unwanted pregnancies, maternal death during childbirth, unchecked population growth, and the spread of  STDs from unprotected sex.  The biggest impediment to fixing these festering challenges is lack of reproductive choice and access to contraception.   For women in Africa, as well as other places around the world, it's not just lack of access to contraception that is standing in the way of real reproductive choice. Much of the problem is with the social values of men.  Too many remain culturally hostile to the use of contraception.

Bill Gates wants to change that by developing a way to enhance the sexual experience through the use of condoms that heighten the pleasure of sex. No telling if such a condom can actually be invented, but Gates has provided the incentive to try and make it happen. It's a terrific idea and very much worth pursuing.

Bill and Melinda Gates are doing great things with their mega-money.  I admire them tremendously for being the example all people blessed with massive wealth should emulate.

_______________


Bill Gates Condom Challenge: Foundation Will Pay You To Reinvent The Rubber

      

The Huffington Post | By Jessica Prois Posted: 03/22/2013 1:49 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 1:51 pm EDT

 

Though condoms come in different textures, sizes and even tastes, these options aren't enticing enough to get people to actually use them in many parts of the world.

And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wants to change that. The nonprofit, which tackles global health issues, is seeking submissions for the "Next Generation Condom" challenge. The initiative asks for innovative designs that create a sexual experience that feels even better than not using a condom. The new design must also protect from the spread of HIV and disease, of course.
"What if we could develop a condom that would provide all the benefit of our current versions, without the drawbacks? Even better, what if we could develop one that was preferred to no condom?" The Gates Foundation's blog reads.

The foundation cites deterrents to using protection such as difficulties in negotiating condom use among commercial sex workers. What's more, in many places there are cultural barriers thwarting use of protection. In Zambia, for example, requesting use of a rubber can lead to domestic violence, AIDS Alliance reports.

Despite the facts surrounding protection from condoms, usage is sparse in places where HIV is most prevalent, Stephen Becker, deputy director of the HIV Program at the Gates Foundation, told MyNorthwest.com. So he said it's time to innovate.

"The more appealing a condom is for a man to use, the greater likelihood of use there will be," he said. "And we're not talking about a particularly expensive technology here by any means. They are the least expensive HIV technology."

The Gates Foundatinon will give away $100,000 to the winner through its Grand Challenge Exploration, $200 million in grants to fund research that fights disease in the developing world


Here is a link to the Gates Foundation Condom Challenge...http://www.grandchallenges.org/Explorations/Topics/Pages/NextGenerationCondomRound11.aspx



 

Primary Focus - An Open Internet

So much is going on these days; the world is in such turmoil,  the importance of keeping the Internet open, unfiltered, and easily accessible cannot be overstated. 

Any strategy for affirmative and inclusive change depends on networked communication fostered by the Internet.  The first of all the Amendments to the U.S. Constitution affirms the fundamental right to free expression.   

In the world we know, the Internet has become civilization's nervous system. It allows us to communicate with each other quickly, easily, and cheaply in remarkably broad fashion. It gives anyone with a tablet or smart phone the ability to access countless nodes of knowledge and perspective.

The net is an opening to many pathways for growth and understanding.

The net is indispensable to the forging of public consensus, and should never be limited by any form of censorship.

In Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries,  the Internet has powered the 'Arab Spring'.  In every nation where the Internet is an unencumbered, open source of competing ideas,  at every level of governance - local, national, regional, and global - dialogues are ongoing that result in common purpose.

There are forces at work that don't support free expression, at least not when it involves ideas incompatible with their own.   People who are threatened by competing ideas don't want a free, open, and easily accessible net.  The corporate providers of internet services like Comcast want to be able to control the information their subscribers can access.  There are powerful interests who will happily pay big money to these providers to restrict what's available on the net.

Net Neutrality is the concept that assures a free and open internet. Free expression is a right affirmed by the 1st Amendment.  At this moment in Washington, lobbyists focused on the net are working their manipulation game in the halls of Congress. Their mission is to restrict net neutrality. We the people must be vocal on this subject. We must let our elected representatives know in no uncertain terms that any kind of legislated limit on open access to the net is unacceptable.

Here is a link to a group that is focused on protecting your right to an open internet...http://www.theopeninter.net/

"Great lady, I have news."

This entry's title is a line from my novel, Virtue, which now exists in manuscript form. 

_________________

Here is an independent script analyst's synopsis of  Virtue.

A tycoon in charge of Starling Worldwide, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, puts his empire at risk when he falls for a controversial humanitarian and is transformed in the process.

Raised in wealth and privilege, successful executive GREG HAMMOND has followed in his father’s footsteps and rules the family empire, making money and his stockholders happy. Although his half-sister LYDIA and her son ANDRE want to topple Greg from the Starling throne, they can’t succeed as long as he holds patriarch Poppy’s approval.

Then Greg meets and falls for DARIA, who is as much of a warrior as he is only for a completely different agenda: she doesn’t want to profit from the world, she wants it to profit from her. Although he woos her enough to donate to her cause and spend a passionate weekend with her, she sees humanitarian DR.WREN as more her type.

 Falling in love with Daria strips off Greg’s blinders. As he really sees the world for the first time, he finds he can’t go back and goes out on a limb to take his company with him. Andre sees his new behavior as an opportunity to leverage for control of the company and plays dirty to get it. Greg and Andre’s duel comes to a head in a boardroom war that engages the public, puts their personal relationships at risk and has a worldwide impact.

____________________

One of the central plot elements in Virtue is the female lead's quest to influence the people living in an Ethiopian slum. She brings them an initiative designed to educate and to empower, particularly the women,  The story puts a glaring spotlight on a cultural tradition practiced widely in Africa. It's called female genital cutting or FGC. In this tradition, girl children between three years and eight years of age are subjected to having their labia and clitoris' cut off.  This is thought to assure they will remain chaste and sexually pure when they get older.  More than 130 million women in Africa have had this done to them.  In a country like Ethiopia, 75% of girl children have been subjected to or are at risk of being subjected to FGC.  Not only is it a heinously cruel personal violation, women subjected to FGC also have huge problems later with child birthing due to the loss of elasticity in their vaginal areas, making natural child birth a highly risky prospect.

FGC may be tradition, but it is indefensible and has no place in a modern world.   There are two global non-profit groups I admire that are focused on empowering women and ending the practice of FGC. They are Tostan,  based in Senegal and the Orchid Project based in London.   Please go to their websites and learn about FGC and then stand with them as they work to make a difference for the women and girl children of Africa.

Here is a link to Tostan...  www.tostan.org 


Here is a link to the Orchid Project...www.orchidproject.org